The relationship between the handwashing compliance among the staff nurses and the incidence of nosocomial infection in the Intensive Care Units of selected private hospitals in Cebu City, January-September 1999

Design: Non-experimental ex-post facto (descriptive correlational) design.

Setting: The Intensive Critical Care Units of Chong Hua Hospital, Cebu (Velez) General Hospital and Cebu Doctors' Hospital in Cebu City.

Subjects/ Participants: All sixty-one (61) ICCU staff nurses of the three selected private hospitals.

Procedures/ Intervention: An evaluation questionnaire based on the Guideline for Handwashing and Hospital Environmental Control (1985) were administered to all ICCU nurses. Three nurses evaluated one nurse. The evaluators and evaluatees were selected by simple random sampling.

Research Instruments/ Measures: An evaluation questionnaire.

Results: Majority (55.56%) of the ICCU staff nurses in Hospital C. scored excellent in their handwashing compliance while Hospitals A and B staff nurses scored very satisfactory (85.71% and 58.0% respectively). Hospital A had a 23% incidence rate of nosocomial infection, Hospital B 15.0%, and Hospital C 1.6%. Results of the computation of the Pearson-Product Moment Correlation Coefficient showed a computed r value of negative 0.85 against a critical value of 0.900 at 0.05 level of significance. This indicates a high inverse relationship between the variable (though not significant).

Conclusion: There is no significant relationship between the handwashing among the staff nurses and the incidence of nosocomial infection in the ICCU of selected private hospitals in Cebu City.